Every business in Japan can now sign up for Stripe and take advantage of the complete Stripe stack. Many core Stripe features—instant setup, support for 130+ currencies, the ability to build marketplaces, fast and frequent transfers, and more—have not been available in the Japanese market before.

When we started our beta in Japan last year, we saw an opportunity for our product to make a difference for local entrepreneurs: there is a growing local startup ecosystem, an appetite to build new types of businesses (like SaaS companies and marketplaces), and an increasing interest from Japanese companies to expand beyond the local market and go global.

Over the last year, thousands of the most innovative Japanese companies have battle-tested these features with us. Companies like Peatix (which builds tools to manage and grow communities), Gengo (which provides translations for businesses around the world), and ANA (the largest airline in Japan). We’d like to thank all our beta users for their feedback as we’ve rolled out and polished our product for Japan.

To support our Japanese users, we’ve also built a local team to provide reliable Japanese-language support out of our Harajuku office. If you’re interested in joining our growing team, please reach out!

We’re looking forward to seeing what these and future users will build on the new infrastructure we’re bringing to Japan. And if you have any questions or feedback, just drop me a line.